Professional athletes who are still weighing blood doping鈥攁nd it seems that there will always be a few鈥攃an now add black urine to their list of cons. Tyler Hamilton, former pro cyclist turned whistle blower, gave a detailed account on Tuesday of . Speaking via video uplink in Washington, D.C., Hamilton told the court about bags of blood snuck into Tour de France hotels and his trips with other cyclists to see Fuentes in Madrid.
At one point, Hamilton described a 2004 incident in which Fuentes accidentally brought him a bad batch of blood. The team doctor oversaw the transfusion, but Hamilton knew something was wrong. “The reason I knew that was because 30 or 40 minutes later when I went to the bathroom,鈥 he said, 鈥淭he urine was black.鈥
According to Hamilton, Fuentes charged 25,000 euros a year to carry out the transfusions. Hamilton would leave fresh samples of his blood with the doctor that could later be put back into his body. Hamilton alleged that Fuentes might have given him blood that was either tampered with or had belonged to someone else entirely.
Hamilton was and . He was given two separate suspensions for two and eight years, respectively. After recieving his second sentence, he chose to retire.
Read more about Tyler Hamilton and his new book The Secret Race.